Sh Chi

It is the hour before dawn in the barracks of an

RAF squadron on the Northeast coast of England

Gunner Marshall, who is leaving at dawn on a mission

From which there can be no return, is writing a letter

Dear Tim

Tomorrow I'm leaving here to do some special

Work and I'll be gone quite some time

So I decided I would write to you before I lose

Track of what it was I've been wanting to tell you

First, let me wish you a very happy 20th birthday

In doing so, I'm a little matter of fifteen years ahead of myself

For at this writing, unless I've counted wrong

You are five years and three weeks old

You mustn't criticize your mother for being

Late with the mails, because it isn't her fault

I made a special point of asking her not to

Deliver this letter to you until you were 20

Because I wanted to talk to you as

Man to man, and not as father to son

I didn't want your mind to be wandering off to cricket scores

Or the latest mystery movie or the ice cream man, which is

What usually happens when a father talks seriously to his boy

Tim, the fact of the matter is that you know more about

The world at 20 than I have any way of knowing at twice

Your age, and you ought to be telling me things, not I you

By the time you read this yellowing page, you'll have

A much better report on the longitude and latitude of

Civilization than anyone around here can give out today

Frankly, we fellows just don't know where we're going

You at least can see where we've been

I dare say there's nothing I can tell you about the

Unpleasant work at hand that won't have been told a thousand

Times between the writing and the reading of this letter

The historians and the poets will be at it night and day for a century

And the maps will have it all down in black and white

And red and green, showing how it was before and after

But at the moment, all I know for certain is that this

Is a moist, warm August night under a crescent moon

And a cricket is around here somewhere

Being terribly glad he's a cricket

And that pretty soon it will be dawn

And the cricket will stop singing

Also I know that a tree and a star and a wind are

Incredibly wonderful things, not to be taken lightly

And that the earth is not a bad place to walk around on

Well, it's getting a little lighter now in

The east, which means I'll have to hurry along

Tim, there is a comfort in knowing that the morning star which

Glows now so serenely in the indifferent night will hang

Outside your window too on any morning you may choose to hail it

Please give it a salute from me from where you stand

I've just heard the crowing of a cock

There's a speech in Hamlet somewhere, Marcellus I think, which

Tells of a season when the bird of dawning singeth all night long

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad

Then nights are wholesome, then no planets

Strike so hallowed and so gracious is the time

To a more gracious time then, Timothy

To freedom and the England under your feet

To trees, to crickets, to the love of women, to the morning star

The sun is up, and I must go out now into the light

Good luck, Tim

Your father